Why I love: the music in 2001: A Space Odyssey

It's hard to imagine a more oddly appropriate piece of film music than the
Adagio from Khachaturian's Gayane in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

2001: A Space Odyssey

2:21PM BST 04 Jun 2010

I have never seen the ballet; I couldn't tell you the plot; I'm not even sure exactly how you pronounce it. Yet, in the exceedingly unlikely event that I get the call from Kirsty Young, the Adagio from Khachaturian's Gayane will be among my Desert Island Discs. Not only that, it will be the one I save from the encroaching surf.

I originally encountered the piece when, as a wide-eyed 12-year-old, I saw Stanley Kubrick's magnificent 2001: A Space Odyssey for the first of many, many times. It has haunted me ever since.

The film is, of course, a visual triumph, brimming with astonishing special effects that have still not been bettered 42 years on. However, Kubrick's choice of music is just as visionary. The opening Also sprach Zarathustra heralds the cosmic events about to unfold with brooding, spine-tingling brilliance; then there's the inspired use of The Blue Danube to accompany shots of waltzing spacecraft.

Best of all, though, is the Khachaturian Adagio, which comes as the film's third and final act begins.

The spaceship-leviathan Discovery One is heading for Jupiter (which may, it seems, harbour the secret of extraterrestrial intelligence), and the Adagio plays as astronaut Frank Poole exercises in what is, in effect, a giant hamster wheel.

On the one hand, the scene depicts the mundane daily routine of a journey that has already taken many months; on the other, it is shot with mind-boggling ingenuity as Poole and a fellow crew member appear to move about, MC Escher-style, on opposing spatial planes. And the music underscores wonderfully the strangeness of their environment.

It is the sound of gorgeous melancholy, the strings surging and ebbing with an ethereal delicacy, evoking an exquisite sense of solitude and desolation as the ship drifts majestically through the vast interplanetary emptiness. It's hard to imagine a more oddly appropriate piece of music, one so perfectly weightless and chillingly enchanting.

It wasn't what Khachaturian intended when he composed it, but Kubrick's magic touch transforms the piece into true music of the spheres.